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Thoguhts on EVE: This Warrants Real Discussion

I think it very likely I will try EVE or Perpetuum before long. By Winter or early in the cold months I will likely complete the ME trilogy. This is, very likely, the last great single player RPG series I have missed out on. And while other SP games will come round now and then to attract my attention, I find myself more and more wanting a single game that doubles as a hobby, over constantly buying new games.

That said, I have tried numerous Themepark MMO games. WoW, Rift, Tera. Found all of them wanting. But then I have always preferred white water kayaking and rafting, and hiking the wilds, to on-rails roller coasters and game booths in real life. No surprise there; I like my adventure without a script. This said, I become more and more interested with true Sandbox/Wiilderness MMO games over time.

In light of my increasingly serious consideration, I must ask: Why do other corps not plan ahead for Goonswarm antics? Seems squirreling away some resources would be a good plan. Also, lending their own strength to some of the major trade hubs might prove worthwhile for a time.

Face it: Corps have a literally vested interest in trade hub stability. Seems to me you keep yourself at war with GS (police won't touch you if you declare war on them) and then station permanent protectors, on rotating shifts, near major trade hubs. Its boring, I get that; but its part of a game like this. If GS knows they might get jumped - and handily, and right away - the moment they try such a raid maybe it slows them down some.

Also, if GS knows other corps have stockpiles of minerals with which to combat any attempt at OPEC like domination of the market then these raids go for nothing except showing their assess, taking losses and generally getting behind in the arms race against other corps which they doubtless must maintain in order to pull this shit.

GS are one of the biggest, most powerful corps in EVE. It'll literally take a meta-alliance to take them on, and it's unlikely the politics will come through for that to happen. If you were stupid enough to dec (declare war on) them, you'd soon find yourself in a world of hurt.

Stockpiling resources, is all well and good when you know what's coming, but if you don't, it's just silly to keep millions of units of ore and stuff stored all over the place, just in case. That stuff could actually be doing you some good, like building ships, rather than sitting gathering dust in some warehouse in case someone decides to do something like this. It's probably worth noting, afaik, this is the first time anyone has done this in EVE, but being a player-driven game, it's not something CCP will interfere with unless forced to.

That, and keeping sufficient resources squirrelled away means you actually have to protect said resources if someone decides they want it. This is EVE. Someone always wants it.

Thanks Kirrus. I sort of figured this was the problem. I got the distinct impression before that it would be a matter of either hoarding resources just in case, or building more ships. A balance. Nonetheless, the possibility of hoarding - at a price, granted - is there. Obviously, Goon has done it.

Obviously though such hoarding would not be beneficial to a Corp unless something like this did happen. As you say those same material enrich a corp in other ways when used. Building ships, etc. So I can see where hoarding in EVE would be tough.

Also, the general impression of Goon is that they are a powerful Corp/Organization. I did not realize, however, that they were quite that large. Explains why no one has taken them down. And the politics of a meta-alliance, even to an outsider, seem sufficiently complicated that I agree it ain't likely to happen. Too many details involved and probably too much potential for double crossing when/if Goon is thrown a serious setback. Or for Goon retribution once the inevitable end of the meta-alliance comes about.

Also, the general impression of Goon is that they are a powerful Corp/Organization. I did not realize, however, that they were quite that large. Explains why no one has taken them down. And the politics of a meta-alliance, even to an outsider, seem sufficiently complicated that I agree it ain't likely to happen. Too many details involved and probably too much potential for double crossing when/if Goon is thrown a serious setback. Or for Goon retribution once the inevitable end of the meta-alliance comes about.

One of the reasons I quit EVE two months into it was because I could see that my continued survival was in effectively remaining too small a target to be worth the hassle while supercorps like that ran around. This limited potential gameplay, as I didn't want the game to be a job: Clearly there were big fish who took the game more seriously than I did, and they didn't have any compunctions against making the game unplayable for me.

So, why bother? EVE entertains far better as a constant font of internet drama than a game, as it stands.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

One issue with trying to control the market is that it's quite impossible unless you are the richest. Aomeone can always just lower their prices to undercut you (and Goons can almost certainly make it cheaper than you can, being down in 0.0 with all the shinies), or alternatively they can buy up the entire market and place it back at a much higher price (that sort of thing happens pretty regularly with combat assets during major alliance wars - your alliance all flies Amarr?).

As for "protecting" stations, that sort of thing is almost impossible to do. Even assuming you have enough people to stop the Goons from perma-camping the station/stargates (an unlikely prospect), there's nothing to stop them hunting down freighters elsewhere - those things are sloooooow.

Stockpiling is both expensive (you're either buying lots of it or missing out on sales) and risky - there's literally thousands of items on the market of EVE, and even if you're just considering things of value for making, say, ships, you're still probably in the hundreds (talking T2, anyway). What's the guarantee that the specific items that you stockpile will be the ones "blockaded"? Prices fluctuate too, so if the price on those components you stockpiled suddenly hits rock bottom, you're stuck with a large pile of overpriced items. There's also the rate at which you use said items - I once ran the industry of a fairly large industrial corp, and I would regularly buy out most of the minerals in an entire region on a weekly basis just to feed the production lines. Buying enough to supply us for a month would have been prohibitively expensive!

Edit: This might interest/help you - http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/co.../influence.png
Of course, it doesn't show inter-alliance politics or the context of things (e.g. SOLAR FLEET looks like it should be uber-powerful, but I believe they were just used as a buffer to fill up the space left when the rest of the Russians got their asses kicked out)

Haven't played EvE, but the fact that you need to engage in politics involving large organizations and probably will have a very limited game experience unless you eventually reach a leadership position in them seems a rather huge negative mark against the game.

Obviously in a MMO it's not possible to have everyone "on top", but it seems to me that having everyone at roughly the same magnitude of ability to experience and influence the game and able to rise purely or mostly based on computer gaming skills is a much better model.

Even the need to join a guild in MMOs with a raiding endgame is IMHO quite suboptimal, since you have to spend a lot of time "job seeking", trying to look good, discussing with your guild, etc. and have to compromise the way you play to find a middle ground with others.

Yep, EVE sounds amazing, but most of the awesome stories you read are people at the top planning and running stuff. Yes, you can play and be part of that, but you'll just be one of hundreds or thousands of little guys running around doing stuff for them.

Yep, EVE sounds amazing, but most of the awesome stories you read are people at the top planning and running stuff. Yes, you can play and be part of that, but you'll just be one of hundreds or thousands of little guys running around doing stuff for them.

The awesome stories happen on a smaller scale too, and you don't have to feel like one of thousands. I'd say it's more rewarding on a smaller scale anyhow. I don't know anyone who plays/ed without awesome stories of their exploits. Except carebears.